Dream of Telling the Church 2 Chronicles 7:14

Disclaimer:  

I have read so many "prophetic" words of destruction, doom and gloom for years and at times just feel weary from people who are angry and trying to pronounce their own form of fantasized judgement against the world.  There are true Prophets of God who see with His heart, however, and have delivered words of warnings with which we needed to take heed.  I'm not bashing all prophetic words.  But I want us to understand that God is merciful and slow to anger and gives us grace for a very good reason; we desperately need it!  He is patient and loving, but He is also a Righteous Judge.  His desire is for us all to take the free gift of "do-overs" His grace offers just for owning up and turning away from sin.  He even will help us see it if we are too blind, if we really want to!  

Why does He do that?  Because He loves us so much and He alone sees the magnitude of harm sin causes His beloved children and creation.  He wants to spare us from what He knows is eventual when no repentance occurs, so He gave His Son as the Way to freedom from these dangers.  Therefore, as you read this blog, please don't see it as coming from someone who is just saying the same ol' same ol'.  I truly felt the grief in my heart in this dream and know it is a legitimate manifestation of a tender, outstretched hand and heart of God to reach His children, so we can move forward in the showers of blessings He wants to bestow upon us.

2 Chronicles 7:14

If MY people, which are CALLED BY MY NAME, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. (Emphasis mine)

Dream:

I was standing on something elevated and could look out over a multitude. However, I couldn’t see specific faces or specific people.  In fact, I couldn't identify exactly who I was seeing or what I was being elevated by.  It was like I had firm footing, but standing on air.

My heart felt so grieved as I was speaking the words from 2 Chronicles 7:14.  In my enunciation of the words of the scripture, I strongly emphasized “If MY people,” and I repeated it several times, “If MY people…” I was really stressing with those of whom the message was for that as God’s people WE are responsible for seeking Him and repenting for OUR evil.  THEN He will heal our land.

Interpretation:

I feel like the message to this dream was an earnest cry to God’s people that He is grieved with the passivity of His people with regard to repentance.  There is NOTHING hidden from His sight and He is holding US responsible for the effects of our own sin and what it is causing to occur in our nation.  Even if we can not exactly identify members of the Body of Christ who are in sin, (I couldn't identify people in the dream) there are those of us who God is seeing specific sin for which we need to repent.  In His mercy, He is giving forth clear instruction to us which is a very simple way to receive the blessings of His healing what ails this land.

We cannot point the finger at the unsaved and say the problems with this land are all their fault.  We proclaim quite boldly that it's Hollywood's fault, it's the administration's fault, it's all a definitive group of people choosing a particular brand of sin!  However, they are not carrying the same responsibility as we are because we are children of the Most High God and to whom much is given, much is expected, (Luke 12:45). Greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world.  Even though satan is the lord of this world, there is a FAR GREATER Lord in us Who brings beauty from ashes, Who turns what was meant by the evil one around for good, Who brings order out of chaos, (1 John 4:4, Gen. 50:20, Gen. 1:1-3).  If we will do our part, healing can come and release the wave of God's Spirit to be poured out which will then reach the lost whom we have been blaming.  It will then transform their hearts after ours surrender to God's way of refreshing.

Some of us, deep down, know the evil we are participating with and we aren’t fooling the Lord, even if we have deceived ourselves into thinking we can ignore it and it will go away.  Some of us have rejected the promptings of the Lord even after repeated times He has patiently approached us.  Some of us have been given the gift of the Lord sending a messenger to  personally deliver a specific word and we either rebuked them, accusing them and even feeling like the devil sent them, or we have thought there is no way that was truly meant for us and they were just mistaken.  Some of us don’t think what we are doing is actually THAT wrong so we just keep doing it. Some of us have an unrealistic view of God and are afraid of Him, believing if we own up to it, He will smash us like a tiny bug.  Some of us think we got it covered when we confessed a sin, but the truth of the matter is that we were being hypocrites for the sake of recognition, false humility or reputation and have not turned from it at all.  Some of us truly are unaware, but need to take the time to check in with Him and allow Him to show us, if indeed, we are in unknown sin.  

We need to each come before Him and ask like David did, for the Lord to search our hearts and see if there is any unclean thing in us and to renew a right spirit within us, (Psalm 51:10, 139:23).

At the very least, we all need to take a moment, humble ourselves, ask the Lord if there is anything displeasing Him about us and then repent for that, specifically, if He shows us something.  We need to own up to it before Him and let that repentance the Holy Spirit leads us into then bring a refreshing to our individual hearts and lives and our nation, as we do this corporately in the body of Christ.

Prayer:

Holy Spirit, it is Your job to bring conviction, so I thank You for Your convicting work on our hearts right now as we read this word.  I ask You to impart revelation where we are not seeing what we need to see.  Take the blinders of deception, ignorance or fear off our eyes and help us come humbly before You and courageously face what we need to face.  Lead us into repentance and help us to fully and completely come clean before You, Lord God, accepting Your cleansing work of grace and forgiveness.  Thank You, Lord, that we will ALWAYS need You.  I also thank You that You sweep across this land and bring Your healing word to whomever it needs to be given.  We love and adore You and give You our hearts.  You alone are worthy.  Amen

 

This song is powerful, although there is one line I felt I couldn't agree with, "Take this breath from my lungs if I don't breathe for You."  There are times we just don't walk the walk well and we don't give Him glory; and I sure don't want to be asking something like that!  :)

Dream of Seaweed in Pools-Doubt and Unbelief

Dream: 

4-8-16

I was looking at and getting into a pool where masses of other people were playing.  However, the pool also had lots of objects like what you would see in a junky garage: old tools, storage items, and unidentifiable rusty objects.  I noticed the pool was also thickly covered in a mossy seaweed which ultimately became detestable to me.  I then had on mesh like gloves that I began to sweep across the surface with outstretched arms to skim off the seaweed.  It was as if my body was forming a cross in this motion of cleansing.  I was gathering it in bunches and then tossing it out.  I couldn’t get enough of it, however, and I eventually got out of that pool. 

Next, I was standing on a different level below a second pool which was up on higher ground.  I was looking up at it from the concrete ground.  I could see that pool was full with people, old junky objects and tons of seaweed as well yet seemed even worse than the first pool was.  I looked down and saw piles of seaweed.  This time I was tossing the bundles back into that second pool.  A young man kept tossing the moss back to me.  It would land at my feet, and I would quickly gather it all up and throw it back in that pool.

 

Interpretation:

The pools represent the world and its way of thinking.  We who are born again are in the world but not of it, (John 17:16). When we are of the world we are reliant on our substance of the world that drives us and which we depend on, much like we depend on our cars to drive us everywhere.  We house our cars in garages to keep them safe and maintained which symbolizes all the “tools” and junk the world uses to preserve the means by which they are driven to do and think the way they do; hence, all the junk in the pools that looked like old stuff from a garage.

The “seaweed” represents doubt and unbelief-we have to “see” it to believe it, which isn’t faith but “weeds” that ruin the beauty of true faith.  Faith trusts God regardless of what we see.  

Skimming off the seaweed from the first pool represents cleaning out the doubt and unbelief from our minds.  I did this for quite a while in the dream, which represents that it takes a while for God to work the process in us, using His grace to help us begin to think differently.  It was the work He finished on the cross, (my body formed a cross in the cleansing process) that completed the changes which He will work to renew our minds to the Word of God.  This work of His will instill faith in us since faith comes by hearing the Word, (Romans 10:17) and He is THE WORD.  Pressing into relationship with Him (outstretched arms) will perform the work in us. 

I eventually got out of the first pool entirely which represents choosing to no longer think and believe like the world does.  We are told in both Revelations 18 and Jeremiah 51 to come out of the world’s ways, which is a dependency in our own methods/mindsets instead of depending on God and His ways.  

The second pool symbolizes the world’s ways which, through God’s mercy and grace, we come out of and want nothing more to do with the doubt and unbelief caused by thinking the way the world does.  That’s why I kept tossing all the doubt and unbelief (seaweed=see weed) back in to the man in the pool who kept tossing it all back to me.  The world will want us to operate and walk in their ways, (tossing it at my feet) with a dependency on what they think, feel and believe.  Those ways of thinking will be counter to true faith in God as our Provider, Safety, Rescuer, Source, Counselor, True Love, ALL things!   

“Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them,” (Ephesians 5:11).  That second pool was in a seemingly “higher” elevation than where I was standing, however, it was “exposed” at that level for what it really was; junk that truly won’t help us but will work against us if we rely on it.  The fact that the young man kept tossing the seaweed back to me shows us we will have our hearts tested consistently in the areas of doubt and unbelief as trials present themselves.  We will have to make the choice to stand in faith and refuse to give in to doubt and unbelief.  We will know if we gave in to the temptation if we begin to experience fear, anxiety, worry or frustration over a particular situation.

Being “lower” in where I was now standing in the dream by the second pool, shows that the posture of our heart needs to be one of humility.  True humility depends on God and is foolishness to the world.  “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you,” (1 Peter 5:6-7).  When we do this, humbling ourselves by casting the worry, anxiety, and fear on Him, He will take care of whatever it is because He cares FOR us, so we don’t have to.  It shows we are trusting Him to take care of the situation, knowing in our own humility that we are incapable without Him, no matter how much “stuff” we have that we could rely on instead of Him.

The second pool being worse than the first is twofold:

1.  Once we are enlightened to God’s truth, it seems like darkness is even darker.  We have to press into God to not operate in a self-righteous attitude.  At first, it seems we become more judgmental.  We need to continue allowing Him to mature us and let Him deliver us of that.

2.  This is a reflection of the times we are in; “For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the LORD will arise upon you, and His glory will be seen upon you,” (Isaiah 60:2).  

Standing on “concrete” in the dream shows that we are standing on FIRM ground when we are fully trusting Him.

Prayer: 

Father, forgive us when we are not relying on and trusting You, when we are not believing as BELIEVERS!  Deliver us from doubt and unbelief which is actually trusting in things other than You and which produces anxiety, fear, and worry in our minds and hearts. Deep down, we know it’s not a firm ground we are standing on when we don’t trust You.  Reveal Yourself to us so You can set us free from this false sense of security or looking to other means instead of You.  Deliver us from doubt and unbelief. Help us to learn, step by step, that we can fully TRUST You!  Create a hunger in us for You and reliance on and trust in You.  Help us RECEIVE Your perfect love for us that casts out ALL fear! Amen

Noooooo...don't take the bait! Stay in Faith!

I Need a New Start

Things have been far from easy or comfortable for quite some time for my husband and me.  This journey of learning to trust God as a couple, fully, for our daily provision and not get discouraged when things don’t seem to be working out well, has made me feel double minded, as I ride a roller coaster of emotions.  Some days I’m a faith giant and others I’m bottoming out in the frustrations of how long this is taking to get on stable ground.  I know we are where God wants us, obeying His direction and timing, even though it is not the road we really want to travel right now.  The main battle is with my flesh that just doesn’t want to be in this situation of struggle any longer.  

Some things I know:  

• We need to not make this worse by believing things which trouble our minds that aren’t even a reality
• Even though the process feels very painful, it is a good plan which will ultimately put us in perfect alignment with God’s will for our lives
• The transforming process burns, yet these fiery trials are purposed to renew the way we think
• There are some things we have to let go of even though it feels like doing so will cause us to slide over the cliff of security and free fall into the valley of the unknown
• Through this we will learn to trust Him at deeper levels than ever before.

In my quiet time with God this morning I closed my eyes and just breathed, slowly, declaring, “God…We need a new start.” I waited in the silence fully expecting Him to speak and I then heard Him say, “I have given you a new day.”

This may not have felt like the answer I wanted but it actually was just what I needed.  No matter what we are going through, each day is our opportunity to start over.  But how do we start over when our circumstances are still anything but ideal?  Our new start comes when we start over in our mind, being purposeful in thinking about what we are thinking about.

Truly, our thought life is what is at the root of our depression, fear, anger, sadness, lethargy, lack of motivation, bitterness, frustration and a plethora of other emotions we feel.  What thoughts are going through our mind continuously?  It’s important to identify because those thoughts result in the emotions we feel.  Emotions follow a thought.

What I have noticed is that the more I don’t check those negative, random thoughts and just let them run wild like a child out of control because of their parents’ lack of disciplinary action, is that they grow.  They grow more constant and they grow more negative.  They begin to spread like cancer, infecting even what used to be a healthy outlook, until we have a mindset that is negative.   Our mind is now held captive to a dark side that struggles to see anything good anymore.  Everything gets tainted with filters of negativity and our perception is out of balance and false.

The eventual reality of what happens in our lives is that we unknowingly attract, draw, or create the things we think about.  Job confessed that the very thing he continually thought about in fear and dread is exactly what came upon him. (Job 3:25)  “As a man thinks so is he,” (Proverbs 23:7), shows us that it doesn’t matter what we present to the outside world.  Whatever is going on inside our mind is what we truly are.  So if we think negative thoughts, we will be a negative person. If we think positive, Godly thoughts, we will be a person who is a blessing to ourselves and others around us.

  

Life is cycles.  We see it in nature: condensation, precipitation, evaporation, condensation, precipitation, evaporation; spring, summer, fall, winter, spring, summer, fall, winter; seed, time, harvest, seed, time, harvest; and it’s true for our life as well.  We have a thought, we ponder it, it gets down into our heart, we speak it, which causes us to have more thoughts, and the cycle starts all over again. 

Our words are creative since God made us in His image; everything that we see was created by the WORD of God.  Proverbs 18:21 states, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it and indulge it will eat its fruit and bear the consequences of their words.”  Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. (Luke 6:45)  What we say flows from what is in our heart, and what’s in our heart is what we put there by continually thinking about it.  We create a cycle with those thoughts and then before we know it we start muttering or speaking what is going on in our mind/heart until eventually, the very things we fear, dread, hate to have occur are the very things that do!  We have to guard our thoughts and hearts and only allow inside that which is good for us so that blessings will eventually manifest in our lives!

So how do we start over in the “new day” God gives us?  We CHOOSE to “think on things that are lovely, pure, true, of good report, if there be anything excellent, if there be anything praiseworthy, think on these things.”  (Philippians 4:8)

Since God made our minds incapable of thinking two thoughts at the same time, that actually helps us to choose which one we will think about.  Our initial problem with this can be that perhaps we don’t understand that we can take our thoughts under our control and they don’t have to just run randomly all over the place.  According to God, we most certainly can take authority over our own minds and make it obey us:  ^“casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)

After we figure out that we CAN control our thoughts, our next temptation is to be lazy with it or let self-pity or self-focus be fed by our thought life.  Let’s face it; sometimes it just feels really good to have a pity party with our thought life!  

Therefore, we have to deny that carnal side of our nature, and starve it to death by refusing to feed it with negative thoughts.  We need to be quick to say, “In your face, negativity!  I’m gonna think on things that are GOOD FOR ME to think about!” 

 

Another very powerful weapon is to call that bad thought a liar.  Sometimes I will literally say out loud, “You’re a liar!”  I feel the power of that simple statement as it shuts the mouth of the voice that is counter to God’s truth about me, my circumstances, or anything else that I need to refute.  For instance, if we have a thought pop in our heads like, “You’ll never have enough.  You will always struggle.”  Declare boldly, “You’re a liar.”  You can then come back with God’s word on the matter, but that means you have to study His word so you know what to come back with.  :)

Cut that thought off at the pass.  You can tell when it’s going to be a bad one and just refuse to let your mind finish it.  You can say, “I rebuke that!” or even a simple, “No” will suffice.  Don’t let it complete its destructive message.

The next thing to understand is that we need to replace the bad thought with something good.  Why “replace” it?  Let’s demonstrate this. I want you to form a picture in your mind about a pink elephant.  Got it?  How about some polka dots on her?  What color are those polka dots on that pink elephant?  Now STOP thinking about that pink polka dotted elephant!  No, I’m serious! Stop thinking about that pink polka dotted elephant!  How’s that going for you?  That’s why we have to replace that thought with something else.  It’s really hard to tell ourselves to stop thinking about something unless we move onto something else to think about.

  

So now think about a cuddly puppy with fuzzy, soft, brown fur and that odd yet intriguing breath which only puppies own.  See him rolling around on the floor biting your favorite shoe?  Unless you put that pink polka dot elephant in the background behind that adorable puppy, you stopped thinking about her once you formed that pup in your thoughts.

No matter how terrible our life may seem, we all have something we can be grateful for and we can think on those things.  We have a God whom we often misunderstand. He is a good God who loves us and truly could give no better of a gift then giving the life of His Son as our Savior.  We can turn our perception around of a situation and focus on an enjoyable part of our life.  We can choose to believe God loves us, has a wonderful plan for our life and when He sees the time is right, will change/use the undesirable part at some point.  Life alterations can take time and we need to give Him room to operate. 

 

We can begin to look in God’s word regarding our circumstance to find what He says about it which will be the opposite of what our flesh, the world, and the devil want us to believe.  For instance, if I am experiencing lack in my finances, I need to declare what God says; that I have life in abundance, (John 10:10); that with Him as my Shepherd, I shall not want, (which means lack). (Psalm 23)  He meets our needs according to the riches of His glory in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19)

To help us get in the right frame of mind, we can create a worshipful atmosphere with good music that delights our hearts and makes us feel His peaceful presence.  We have plenty of resources like no generation ever before to have music at our techie fingertips. Worshipping God will DEFINITELY make you feel better if you do it long enough to chase away the blues, “Put on a garment of praise for a spirit of heaviness.” (Isaiah 61:3)

How long do we need to work this plan?  We need to do this however long it takes to change our mind.  It may be a few times a day to seeming thousands of times.  It may be for a long period of time or just a short season.  But stick with it until it works.

To recap:

1.  Stop the bad thought before it finishes

2.  Replace it with the opposite thought found in God’s word or thought of how good God is

3.  Create a peaceful atmosphere of worship

I know that through this current and lengthy circumstance, God is perfecting that which concerns us and if we will allow the process of trials to do their work, we will be “perfect and entire, lacking nothing.” (James 1:4) So when I get up in the morning, I choose to declare “This is the day the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it. Your mercies are new this morning and it’s my new start!” (Psalm 118:24, Lamentations 3:22-23)

Father, please change our minds.  Amen.